


leave me lonely

by vengefulvicious



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depressed Dean, Heartbroken Dean, M/M, apologies in advance, but he has too much manly bearded pride to say it so hes just gonna cry about it instead, dean dealing with their s15 break up, fuck up dean, or more accurately NOT dealing, post 15x06, this one will probably hurt, where are u cas dean needs u and hes sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21644260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vengefulvicious/pseuds/vengefulvicious
Summary: Dean is not doing well after the Big Destiel Breakup. He finds something in Cas' abandoned closet that makes things about a million times worse.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 90





	leave me lonely

There was a distinct emptiness to the bunker now that hadn’t been there before. It was almost palpable, a cloying fog, poisonous and miserable, that doesn’t dissipate no matter how much Dean tried to fan it away. It filled every corner, every barren room, spread a chill throughout the winding corridors that he could feel deep in his bones. The peaceful silence that Dean had once cherished was now overbearingly loud, an endless ringing in his ears that no amount of heavy metal could ever drown out. Loneliness was now steeped into the very foundation of this place, bleeding into the walls, permeating the air vents so that they were constantly breathing it in.

_I think it’s time for me to move on._

There was a perpetual sting behind Dean eyes that he woke up and went to sleep with, a yawning pit in his belly that no amount of bacon and booze has been able to fill. His head felt constantly cloudy, and he shuffled now more than he actually walked, the lethargy sitting heavy on his shoulders, weighing him down. That was the state he was in when he found himself standing outside of Cas’ bedroom door at 3am. He’d just woken up thrashing from nightmares of guttering blue eyes and the point of an angel blade grotesquely sticking out from a chest, his own voice punching out a broken ‘No!’ as he slumped to his knees beside the fallen body. It had been so vivid in his mind that he remained a shaking mess until several minutes later. 

Cas’ bedroom door was closed, has been since he left. They’d given Cas the room more for what it represented than for any functionality he’d find out of it, since the dude didn’t need to sleep. It was a physical symbol of his place in their family, a formal and tangible induction into the Winchester household, cursed as that household may be. It’d felt like a natural thing to do; Cas had become one of them as much as Dean or Sam were, a third wheel that added extra grip, greater stability. It was to let him know he’d always find a home with them. 

All of that was shot to hell now. 

_I don’t think there’s anything left to say._

_I think it’s time for me to move on._

Dean allowed himself a second’s hesitation before he turned the doorknob and stepped in. He flicked the light on, watched as brightness flooded the immaculate room. A shiver wracked through his sluggish frame and he slumped deeper into his grey robe. It was so damn cold in there, any warmth sucked away by Cas’ absence. 

He remembered the way Cas’ eyes had brightened when Dean showed him to the room, smile playing tentatively on his lips as though he wasn’t sure if he could really believe it. 

“Really? For me?” he’d whispered in wonder, wide eyes drinking in the bare room before him. 

Dean had laced their fingers together and squeezed, tugging Cas into his arms. He pressed a soft kiss into Cas’ hair and buried his nose in the fluffy tufts, inhaling deeply. “Always.”

Cas face was nuzzled into the crook of Dean’s neck, pressing grateful kisses and murmured declarations of love into his skin. Wrapped in Cas’ arms, he'd felt an outpour of warmth, of _rightness_ , that reached down to the tips of his toes and swelled his heart with the concept of _family_. He’d had that. And no matter how hard he’d tried to hold on to it, like sand it had slipped right through his fumbling fingers. 

_I’m dead to you._

_I think it’s time for me to move on._

He padded in and settled tentatively on the perfectly made bed. He looked around the room, taking in all of Cas’ clumsy, eccentric attempts at personalising his space. The bright green throw blanket draped artfully along the foot of the bed was a damn eyesore. Dean ran his fingers through the soft material and felt like he wanted to cry. Cas had stuck up ugly pink floral print wallpaper on one of the walls, an “accent wall” he’d explained when Dean asked about it and Dean informed him honestly that _it looks like every grandma’s wet dream, Cas_. He had a tacky green dreamcatcher hung on the other wall, as well as a framed picture of a bright red 1970 Mustang which Dean suspected was done to please him and not because Cas, with his teleporting angel wings, had suddenly garnered an interest in human modes of transportation. Most of it was ugly individually, but collectively they created a monstrosity that clashed horrifically and made Dean want to claw his eyes out. But it made Cas less likely to up and disappear without a trace like he normally did, and so Dean was content to suck it up. 

He couldn’t look for too long at the pictures tacked painstakingly on the headboard, images that detailed smiling faces, that spoke of belonging, of home. Flashes of his brother’s floppy hair and goofy grin, of Cas’ ruffled appearance and bemused stare as Jack beamed guilelessly beside him. Dean’s own face seemed to feature predominantly in this display, a mixture of snapshots taken unawares with a pizza held half-way to his mouth, or his cheek marred by black grease as he frowned in annoyance before the popped open hood of Baby, or his arms crossed as he leaned lazily against a wall, eyes burning a hole through Cas’ face as the angel read obliviously from an open book in front of him, the both of them frozen in that moment forever. 

_I think it’s time for me to move on._

He rubbed roughly at his face, let the stifling silence, the emptiness, weigh heavily against his restless limbs. They curdled in his stomach and spoiled through his veins, and he simmered with an utter frustration, a hopelessness that made him want to crawl in a dark corner and just fucking die. There was no moving on for him. Not when he’d known how good it could feel, when he’d held happiness in his very hands. When he’d woken up to it every morning. 

He barely registered it when he moved, his muscles acting of their own accord as he surged off the bed and began thrashing at the closest thing he could find. Bedside lamps became a shattered mess on the floor, a vase of dead flowers crunching savagely as he threw it furiously at the stupid floral-print wall. He punched brutally against the closet, knuckles splitting open on hard wood, splinters digging into his fist as he continuously pummelled into it with a mindless, seething rage. 

Fuck Cas for leaving. Fuck Cas for making him fucking care, for weaselling into his pitiful fucking life and acting like he was a permanent fucking fixture. Fuck Cas with his stupid fucking trench coat and his stupid fucking tie and his dumb chapped lips and the fucking moronic way he said his name. Just. Fuck Cas. 

Something plopped heavily in the closet, shaken loose by the force of Dean’s hits. The sound was loud enough to halt his relentless pounding, piquing his interest. The anger was still pumping furiously through his veins, bubbling hotly beneath Dean’s skin. He panted as he opened the destroyed closet door, and the whole thing came off its hinges in his hands. He plunked the hunk of wood on the floor and searched for the source of the sound. The closet was almost completely bare save for a few dingy hand-me-down tees, some sweats and mismatched socks, so it wasn’t hard to find. It had fallen to the floor, an old shoe box sitting upside down. Dean grabbed it from the bottom gently and sat with it on the bed, the aftermath of his blind rage crunching loudly beneath his slippers. 

It was heavier than he’d expected, and he opened it with ginger curiosity, wondering what the fuck Cas had stashed in the fraying box because it sure as hell ain’t shoes. At first he hadn’t known what to make of the contents, an assortment of odd bits and bobs that seemed of little value and looked completely innocuous. But then he sifted through them more closely, and his harsh breathing became the result of something totally different to anger. 

There were dozens of beer caps. Multiple sugar packets from various diners they’d hit across the Midwest. A random shoelace, some gum wrappers. A pillowcase. An old Metallica shirt with a huge hole in the armpit that Dean always wore to bed until he’d suddenly misplaced it. Birthday cards he’d given Cas every September 18th for the last ten years despite (or because of) Cas’ yearly exasperated protests that he _was created millennia before the human method of organising the passage of time had existed, Dean_. A piece of paper filled with Dean’s own chicken scratch that was his research for some case they worked, a Vonnegut book Dean’d finished only last month, an obnoxiously large belt buckle Dean had bought at a flea market that advised you to “save a horse, ride a cowboy” which Sam had bitched about: _I won’t be seen out in public with you wearing that, Dean._ Ticket stubs from when Dean took Cas to the movies for the first time, where they sat in the back and shared their first kiss in the dark. A hasty note scribbled on a napkin: _Gone for pie, be back in 20 –love, D_. A condom wrapper from the first time they’d had sex; Dean knew because they hadn’t used one since. An old toothbrush with its bristles all gross and frayed, probably because Cas didn’t understand how fucking creepy that is. 

There was a horrible cramp building in Dean’s chest, and he scrubbed at it harshly, felt a burning start behind his eyes. It was a box of Dean collectibles. Cas had been pilfering shit for fucking _years_ , sneaky fingers strategically plucking things from right under Dean’s nose so he could keep them all in this fucking box like little keepsakes. Like these small, insignificant objects had some sort of inherent value, like they actually fucking mattered and deserved to be saved, simply because they were Dean’s. The thought hurt like a bitch. 

_You’re dead to me_ , Dean had said. As if Cas wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to him. As if Cas hadn’t seen him at his fucking worst and suffered the brunt of his mood swings and his heavy fucking baggage and his mean, spiteful words, and still kept coming back anyway, hopelessly devoted to someone who will only ever be corrupting poison. A walking curse.

_The plan changed, Dean. Something went wrong. You know this, something always goes wrong._

_And why does that something always seem to be you?_

The words cut like razor blades coming out of his throat, and he’d regretted them as soon as they were out. But the anger was black venom in his veins, his grief manifesting as a seething rage that turned his blood into acid, its acrid taste flooding his mouth. He watched heartbreak flash across Cas’s face at his hateful words and felt a rush of perverse satisfaction at the sight, even as a voice in the back of his mind was shouting at him to _shut the fuck up and stop being a fucking asshole_. But the words were out, and he wasn’t going to take them back.

“I’m so fucking stupid, Cas. I’m so fucking stupid.” 

Something inside him was breaking. Or maybe it already was broken, and now the jagged shards of it were shifting with the overbearing weight of his remorse, slicing deeply into his innards, cutting into his heart.

He hadn’t allowed himself to cry since everything had gone to shit. But now the tears came freely, and he couldn’t stop them. Fat, hot drops rolled down his face and landed in his lap. He looked down miserably at his hands, felt a rush of disgust at the sight. His hands were weapons of destruction. They didn’t build, only destroyed. They ruined everything they came in contact with. Anything good only shriveled and died at their touch. He clenched them tightly, savoured the sharp stinging of his split knuckles, watched a droplet of blood seep out of a wound. 

“Come back,” he whispered. “Please, come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> set after 15X06. initially set out to write a cute and fluffy destiel moment, but somehow it turned into something melodramatic and depressing af. why am i like this
> 
> leave a kudos/comment if you enjoyed! thanks for reading <3


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